After 40 some years later, it's time to start putting this idea back on track. After turning 51 this last Halloween, I've decided to start moving forward with dreams that I have set aside. Everyone has a dream. Maybe mine are very simple to some. To others it may seem lame. But to me, it's many things which help me in many different aspects of my personality.
Throughout the last four decades I have developed in so many ways, gained so much life experience and grown in every way. As I sit here now with my boyfriend Keith, watching 20/20 in our decent apartment with Keith's cuddle buddy Witch Hazel, the grey haired calico. Sitting here this evening, reflecting on how I arrived into the life I'm living seems like it was a rough roller coaster ride, a sobbing drama and a gut wrenching comedy. As active as I once was, the life I live with Keith has come to a dream that only some would want.
Keith and I are devoted to one another. He's my one and only. We are not "bar" or "club" people, our social circles are small and quaint. We accept each other for the individuals we have grown into being. When we go out on a date, it's generally to the movies. We have a lot in common with so many of the shows or movies we like to watch. And now that we decided to get rid of cable or satellite television, our clash of personalities have come closer as we discover so many shows, movies and series we commonly like. We have discovered that Hulu Plus and Netflix can change our television habits. Yes we are homebodies with simple lives. We love to go camping, we both have an assortment of artistic talent. He loves to read - where I love to write. Quite frankly, I don't think he knows my passion for writing. Once I actually complete something worthy of notoriety, I'll let him read it. I'm a very simple person. I laugh at some of the stupidest simple jokes and roll my eyes as a grown trembles from the bowels of my voice box.
OK, enough about him and how we are together. I think it's time to get on with my life story which I've now am going to start re-writing once again. Yes I know everyone has had their drudges and peaks in life. For me, the drudges start my life and the peaks happen ever so slowly and not so often.
Everyone I know says that life growing up was horrible. Quite frankly, I agree. Growing up sucked! Don't get me wrong, there were quite a few things which made a great positive influence in my life. Plus, with many experiences one endures creates the person we have all grown into being today.
To give you a little background about me...I am the youngest of four siblings. Our parents were loyal members of St John's United Church of Christ. Our Mother was the pinochle to the sabbatical surrounding their faith. She was just as bat-shit crazy as her sister - Aunt Jean. My mother Lois and Jean were just like their Grandfather. My Great Grandfather Leubke held authoritive positions within the realms of the church. In their minds, they were closer to God than anyone else because they were apart of the higher anarchy to the sabbatical. They were righteous and noble. Water walked upon them. Their spit was purer than baptismal water. They were the blessed and you are going to hell because they have God's hand and not matter what you do, you are not a christian unless you believed in them.
My father was a very hard working Millwright. He worked the southern swing shift at Kimberly Clark Paper Mill in Kimberly Wisconsin. Plus he had a part time job working at Elko Ceramics as a mold pourer. Before the age of 12, I really didn't inter react with my father much. Both my parents were very active with my older brothers who were involved the Torro's and the Americano's Drum & Bugle Corps. Todd, is four and half years older than me; was in the Torro's. Jaye, who is ten years older than me and Scott who is eight years older, were in the Americano's.
With our parents as chaperone's for both bugle corps, meant I was at every parade within miles. Some holidays we traveled to 4 different cities so the marching band would play in the parade of a different city. By the time I was five years old, I never wanted to see another parade again. I remember the one weekend started out in Green Bay, with the Fourth of July parade starting around 9am. As usual, I would stay with the bus driver Marv and his son Ricky. Once all the band members were off the bus and lining up to march the parade route, I would ride in the bus to the end of the parade route. Once the marching band finished marching, everyone piled back into the bus and we were off down the highway to Wrightstown.
As a general rule, I would always walk with my Mother along the Americano's routes while my Father was the Director for the Torro's. At this point, I had to walk along with my mother the entire parade route. The bus driver had to drive back up to Green Bay and pick up the guys from the Torro's and bring them down to Seymour so they could march in the parade there. Once we got to the end of the Wrightstown parade route, we would get on another bus and head down the road to Black Creek. Again, I would walk the entire route with my mother. At the end of that parade route, we would get on another bus and head to another city for another parade. Before I knew it, we were in New London Wisconsin at the last parade for the day.
As the band was getting all lined up for the parade route, Marv, Dad and the Torro's marching band arrived in New London. Both marching bands all lined up and ready to play their last note for the day. Seeing as the regular bus driver was there, I could get on the bus and ride down to the end of the parade route.
One thing you must understand is that I was around four years old at this time. And playing on the bus was nothing new for me. With about 16 assorted yellow school buses all lined up, I had a playground of buses to play on. Before I knew it, the bus I was playing on started moving. There was always one rule I followed, when the bus is moving, sit down until we get to our destination. So I sat and looked out the window. As the bus pulled slowly away, I watched as my Mom, Dad and brothers were all getting prepared to march down the parade route one last time for the day.
Once we are out of site of the parade line up, I realized the bus driver wasn't Marv. His son Ricky wasn't on the bus and I didn't recognize any of the other chaperone's on the bus. Oh oh, I'm on the wrong bus! The bus driver started to become nervous as he didn't recognize me either. All the other chaperone's didn't know who I was and I was strict in following Mom's rule - "Never talk to strangers!" From that point, the bus driver became frantic, the chaperone's were freaked out and I was scared. It was like I was being abducted by a Marching Band Bus driver and a bunch of nervous mothers who were trying to get me back to the right bus.
The bus driver kept driving towards the end of the parade route, knowing that who ever I should be with will be at the end of the route. By this time Marv had notified both my parents that I wasn't anywhere to be seen. At this point, there really wasn't much either one of my parents could do as they had a mission to accomplish with getting through this final parade route. So as the parade started, my parents and brothers would keep an eye out just in case they would see me along the parade route - they didn't know if I decided to stand and watch the parade for once or not. In a frantic, my mother started walking up and down the parade route looking for me, plus notifying a few of the police officers guiding the parade of what I was wearing and such. A police officer had my Mom get on his golf cart as they drove up and down the entire parade route searching for me. My father fell down a few times stumbling over his feet as he was paying more attention to individuals along the route than the marching band.
All the while my parents were searching, Marv decided to drive his bus down to the end of the parade route, in hopes to find me. Marv's thought process was right, he figured that I was playing on so many buses and I just so happen to be on a bus that went down to the end of the route. As Marv parked his bus, the driver to the bus I hijacked to the end of the route was asking other drivers if they were missing a child. Marv claimed me and had me sit on a seat in the bus with the door closed so I wouldn't escape.
One by one as the marching bands finished the parade, my Father arrived at Marv's bus, he notices I was sitting on the seat behind Marv. My Dad then went to one of the police officers, asking him to notifying the officer my Mother was with that I was found. He then radioed to the other officers that I was no longer missing. The officer who drove my Mother around then arrived. Marv opened the doors and here comes Lois, my mother. I knew I was in trouble! She gave me the biggest warmest hug that almost smothered me. As I gasped for air, my pants and underwear were pulled down and her hand slapped my bare butt several times. I began to scream. At high pitch, she grabbed me by the hair on my head, lifting me off my feet and began slapping my face repeatedly. My father literally had to tackle her to make the beating stop. The only thing I can remember from that day was crying myself to sleep in my bed.
____________________
This is just one example of how my life was growing up. In my perspective, I'm not looking for any empathy, sympathy or notoriety on any thing which happened from the past. Please focus on the positive aspects which have been instilled within me from every and all experiences I have endured. From this point forward, you will read so many aspects of my life which are not wholesome or portrayed as a positive manner to move forward as an individual who is ensuring for a better tomorrow. What I am giving you is a person who has lived through many negative aspects who had turned degrading scenarios into a positive aspect from disheartening prospects of life experience into an enlightening individual.
With that understanding, I'm going to roll back to one of my very first memories of life. Lois was always my go-to individual for security. She was my Mother, the one person whom I should be able to trust and count on if things became hay-wire in my life. Believe it or not, but I do have happy memories which occurred prior to this. I remember a time when I was almost 1, laying on a blanket and squeezing my toy tiger while gnawing on his ear. The other memory is when I was about 2, sitting on my bouncy horse and sucking my thumb as I scooted across the living room carpet.
So I was born on Halloween in 1964 - yeah I know - decades ago and I'm older than dirt. Hell Jesus is so much younger than me and quick sand was just invented invented - someone was going DOWN!
Now don't get me wrong, I don't want this book to be about everything that happened to me was negative towards me. I have to let you know that not everything in my life was wrong or negative. The fact that I'm dwelling on the negative aspects are the actual perspective in which created positive aspects of myself have molded me into the person I am today.
Throughout this novel, I will show and display all aspects of my life which were not happy or enlightening. Sorry, but I'm going to sugar coat anything. I'm going to give you a view from which I learned throughout my growing years. As so many people look at an individuals death as to lay in peace. I look at my life as to when I finally found peace. And seeing as I'm writing this myself, I'm not laid to rest.
In my younger years, my mother would read me stories. I remember this was a highlight of the evening before going to bed. At the end of the hallway there was a bookshelf filled with all sorts of books. At the very bottom was a complete set of encyclopedias from 1962, the shelf above that was a complete set of story books. This set had everything in there from nursery rhymes to old folklore stories. Almost every evening, I would grab one of the story books, crawl up on Mom's lap as she would read a story or two before it was time for me to go to bed.
I believe I was around the age of four when many changes were happening to me and things were occurring within our family which made an impact. My Father worked so often, I don't remember too much of him being home. My Mother was an art teacher at Fox Valley Technical College. Along with teaching at the College, her mother, Verona had a ceramic studio in her basement which my Mother also helped teach painting skills. With Dad working 60 plus hours a week and now Mom was working almost 40 hours a week, this left my brothers Jaye, Scott & Todd to watch over me. This was the recipe for my life's disasters.
Putting Jaye & Scott in charge to care for me and my older brother Todd was like trying to scramble hard boiled eggs with a pizza wheel before peeling off the shell. As a general rule, Saturday after breakfast was cleaning day. All the dishes, vacuuming, dusting, laundry and a thorough cleaning of the bathroom was our mission. Once the house was clean, our bedrooms had to be picked up, then if the grass needed cutting, that was to be done as well.
With me only being four years old, my job was to vacuum and bring the clean clothes out of the dryer into the living room so we all could fold them. These were jobs I could do and understand how to do them. Todd was about ten years old and his job was to get as many dishes cleaned as possible, then Scott or Jaye would wash any pots or pans which were difficult to clean. Jay usually followed around behind me as I vacuumed with a dust rag plus adding a load of dirty clothes into the washer and dryer. Scott was really fast and efficient with cleaning the bathroom. So our Saturday morning chores really didn't take very long - well all accept for the laundry. And as a general rule, we would get roughly four loads of laundry finished before noon.
For a while, Saturday's became routine. As we waited on laundry, Saturday morning cartoons played across the old black and white Zenith television screen.
One Saturday morning, things went haywire. Todd felt he was getting the short end of the stick as he traded chores with Scott. After an hour or so of scrubbing in the bathroom, he wasn't able to finish. While I was sitting with Jaye in the living room, Todd marched towards me, grabbing my arm and dragging me into the bathroom. "Here, you finish this! If you have time to sit and watch cartoons, you can do some work for once." Immediately Jaye came to my aide and informed Todd "Perry isn't going to do your chores for you." Todd then became very upset, with a hard push, Todd shoved me into the bathroom. I tripped and fell head first against the toilet.
With all the noise and excitement, Scott arrives to see what was going on. Jaye was about to slug Todd as Scott calls for Todd to follow him. Scott and Todd go off to Jaye & Scott's bedroom while Jaye examines my forehead as a welt started to grow. Jaye grabbed a bag of frozen peas, wrapping it in a dish towel and places it on my forehead. Needless to say I was hurt, scared and shaken up as tears flowed like a waterfall. While Jaye calmed me, I could hear Scott and Todd in the bedroom. I don't know what they were doing, but I knew I didn't want to be any where near Todd. Jaye and I went back into the living room to watch cartoons. A little while later, Todd ran out of the bedroom, naked carrying his clothes into the bedroom which Todd and I shared. He slammed the door shut and didn't come out until Dad came home from work.
Jaye and Scott explained to our father what had occurred. The look in his eyes said so much as he shook his head and sat down in his favorite chair. He looked over at me, with a finger hooking in motion to come to him. I rose up from the floor and stood before him holding the frozen bag of peas to my head. Slowly he took the peas from my hand to see the damages. I watch Dad's eyes closely as his facial expressions gave me some feeling of encouraging conclusion. "You'll be fine, it's just a bump. It will go away in a few days - now go outside and play."
I went out the back door to ride my bike. Jaye followed behind me. As I was about to sit on my bike, Jaye wanted me to follow him with a friendly forward motion wave. I followed him to the otherside of the garage, just out of hearing distance from the kitchen window. He knelt in front of me. Grabbing me by my collar with his index finger in my face, he leaned in with stern soft voice and said "You don't say a fucking word about what goes on in this house to anyone. Do you understand me?" I shake my head in agreement. "If you ever say anthing to anyone about this, I will kill you. Do you understand?" I nodded my head again.
I went upon my way of doing what I usually did with riding my bike, playing in the dirty, ramming trucks together and crying about a skinned knee. Then going back and doing it all again. Throughout that summer I recall seeing many more parades, found myself in places I've never seen and people whom I just met. It was time for me to start venturing out. I began to become more social. I liked meeting my neighbors and I liked meeting their friends. Before you know it, I'm missing.
Yup, no one can find me. Everyone is who lived in our house was looking for me. Each one in a different direction, calling out my name like a search party going in four different diretions. My Father and brothers were usually the search party. After a block or two, I was usually found in one direction or another out playing with some new kid I found within the distance.
It wasn't too long after this, things changed in my life. As brothers, they teach each other many aspects of life. I can't tell you it was out of trust, the willingness to learn or if it was natural within my personal being. I learned a lot about boys and I know what I liked about boys. I learned how to be quiet after all the lights were off in the house. I learned about sleeping naked. And I learned how to stop sucking my thumb. Every night there was something new until our parents bought us a set of bunk beds. Once Todd was up in his bunk, he very seldom came down. With every movement, the joints from the bed creeked.
OK, enough about him and how we are together. I think it's time to get on with my life story which I've now am going to start re-writing once again. Yes I know everyone has had their drudges and peaks in life. For me, the drudges start my life and the peaks happen ever so slowly and not so often.
Everyone I know says that life growing up was horrible. Quite frankly, I agree. Growing up sucked! Don't get me wrong, there were quite a few things which made a great positive influence in my life. Plus, with many experiences one endures creates the person we have all grown into being today.
To give you a little background about me...I am the youngest of four siblings. Our parents were loyal members of St John's United Church of Christ. Our Mother was the pinochle to the sabbatical surrounding their faith. She was just as bat-shit crazy as her sister - Aunt Jean. My mother Lois and Jean were just like their Grandfather. My Great Grandfather Leubke held authoritive positions within the realms of the church. In their minds, they were closer to God than anyone else because they were apart of the higher anarchy to the sabbatical. They were righteous and noble. Water walked upon them. Their spit was purer than baptismal water. They were the blessed and you are going to hell because they have God's hand and not matter what you do, you are not a christian unless you believed in them.
My father was a very hard working Millwright. He worked the southern swing shift at Kimberly Clark Paper Mill in Kimberly Wisconsin. Plus he had a part time job working at Elko Ceramics as a mold pourer. Before the age of 12, I really didn't inter react with my father much. Both my parents were very active with my older brothers who were involved the Torro's and the Americano's Drum & Bugle Corps. Todd, is four and half years older than me; was in the Torro's. Jaye, who is ten years older than me and Scott who is eight years older, were in the Americano's.
With our parents as chaperone's for both bugle corps, meant I was at every parade within miles. Some holidays we traveled to 4 different cities so the marching band would play in the parade of a different city. By the time I was five years old, I never wanted to see another parade again. I remember the one weekend started out in Green Bay, with the Fourth of July parade starting around 9am. As usual, I would stay with the bus driver Marv and his son Ricky. Once all the band members were off the bus and lining up to march the parade route, I would ride in the bus to the end of the parade route. Once the marching band finished marching, everyone piled back into the bus and we were off down the highway to Wrightstown.
As a general rule, I would always walk with my Mother along the Americano's routes while my Father was the Director for the Torro's. At this point, I had to walk along with my mother the entire parade route. The bus driver had to drive back up to Green Bay and pick up the guys from the Torro's and bring them down to Seymour so they could march in the parade there. Once we got to the end of the Wrightstown parade route, we would get on another bus and head down the road to Black Creek. Again, I would walk the entire route with my mother. At the end of that parade route, we would get on another bus and head to another city for another parade. Before I knew it, we were in New London Wisconsin at the last parade for the day.
As the band was getting all lined up for the parade route, Marv, Dad and the Torro's marching band arrived in New London. Both marching bands all lined up and ready to play their last note for the day. Seeing as the regular bus driver was there, I could get on the bus and ride down to the end of the parade route.
One thing you must understand is that I was around four years old at this time. And playing on the bus was nothing new for me. With about 16 assorted yellow school buses all lined up, I had a playground of buses to play on. Before I knew it, the bus I was playing on started moving. There was always one rule I followed, when the bus is moving, sit down until we get to our destination. So I sat and looked out the window. As the bus pulled slowly away, I watched as my Mom, Dad and brothers were all getting prepared to march down the parade route one last time for the day.
Once we are out of site of the parade line up, I realized the bus driver wasn't Marv. His son Ricky wasn't on the bus and I didn't recognize any of the other chaperone's on the bus. Oh oh, I'm on the wrong bus! The bus driver started to become nervous as he didn't recognize me either. All the other chaperone's didn't know who I was and I was strict in following Mom's rule - "Never talk to strangers!" From that point, the bus driver became frantic, the chaperone's were freaked out and I was scared. It was like I was being abducted by a Marching Band Bus driver and a bunch of nervous mothers who were trying to get me back to the right bus.
The bus driver kept driving towards the end of the parade route, knowing that who ever I should be with will be at the end of the route. By this time Marv had notified both my parents that I wasn't anywhere to be seen. At this point, there really wasn't much either one of my parents could do as they had a mission to accomplish with getting through this final parade route. So as the parade started, my parents and brothers would keep an eye out just in case they would see me along the parade route - they didn't know if I decided to stand and watch the parade for once or not. In a frantic, my mother started walking up and down the parade route looking for me, plus notifying a few of the police officers guiding the parade of what I was wearing and such. A police officer had my Mom get on his golf cart as they drove up and down the entire parade route searching for me. My father fell down a few times stumbling over his feet as he was paying more attention to individuals along the route than the marching band.
All the while my parents were searching, Marv decided to drive his bus down to the end of the parade route, in hopes to find me. Marv's thought process was right, he figured that I was playing on so many buses and I just so happen to be on a bus that went down to the end of the route. As Marv parked his bus, the driver to the bus I hijacked to the end of the route was asking other drivers if they were missing a child. Marv claimed me and had me sit on a seat in the bus with the door closed so I wouldn't escape.
One by one as the marching bands finished the parade, my Father arrived at Marv's bus, he notices I was sitting on the seat behind Marv. My Dad then went to one of the police officers, asking him to notifying the officer my Mother was with that I was found. He then radioed to the other officers that I was no longer missing. The officer who drove my Mother around then arrived. Marv opened the doors and here comes Lois, my mother. I knew I was in trouble! She gave me the biggest warmest hug that almost smothered me. As I gasped for air, my pants and underwear were pulled down and her hand slapped my bare butt several times. I began to scream. At high pitch, she grabbed me by the hair on my head, lifting me off my feet and began slapping my face repeatedly. My father literally had to tackle her to make the beating stop. The only thing I can remember from that day was crying myself to sleep in my bed.
____________________
This is just one example of how my life was growing up. In my perspective, I'm not looking for any empathy, sympathy or notoriety on any thing which happened from the past. Please focus on the positive aspects which have been instilled within me from every and all experiences I have endured. From this point forward, you will read so many aspects of my life which are not wholesome or portrayed as a positive manner to move forward as an individual who is ensuring for a better tomorrow. What I am giving you is a person who has lived through many negative aspects who had turned degrading scenarios into a positive aspect from disheartening prospects of life experience into an enlightening individual.
With that understanding, I'm going to roll back to one of my very first memories of life. Lois was always my go-to individual for security. She was my Mother, the one person whom I should be able to trust and count on if things became hay-wire in my life. Believe it or not, but I do have happy memories which occurred prior to this. I remember a time when I was almost 1, laying on a blanket and squeezing my toy tiger while gnawing on his ear. The other memory is when I was about 2, sitting on my bouncy horse and sucking my thumb as I scooted across the living room carpet.
So I was born on Halloween in 1964 - yeah I know - decades ago and I'm older than dirt. Hell Jesus is so much younger than me and quick sand was just invented invented - someone was going DOWN!
Now don't get me wrong, I don't want this book to be about everything that happened to me was negative towards me. I have to let you know that not everything in my life was wrong or negative. The fact that I'm dwelling on the negative aspects are the actual perspective in which created positive aspects of myself have molded me into the person I am today.
Throughout this novel, I will show and display all aspects of my life which were not happy or enlightening. Sorry, but I'm going to sugar coat anything. I'm going to give you a view from which I learned throughout my growing years. As so many people look at an individuals death as to lay in peace. I look at my life as to when I finally found peace. And seeing as I'm writing this myself, I'm not laid to rest.
In my younger years, my mother would read me stories. I remember this was a highlight of the evening before going to bed. At the end of the hallway there was a bookshelf filled with all sorts of books. At the very bottom was a complete set of encyclopedias from 1962, the shelf above that was a complete set of story books. This set had everything in there from nursery rhymes to old folklore stories. Almost every evening, I would grab one of the story books, crawl up on Mom's lap as she would read a story or two before it was time for me to go to bed.
I believe I was around the age of four when many changes were happening to me and things were occurring within our family which made an impact. My Father worked so often, I don't remember too much of him being home. My Mother was an art teacher at Fox Valley Technical College. Along with teaching at the College, her mother, Verona had a ceramic studio in her basement which my Mother also helped teach painting skills. With Dad working 60 plus hours a week and now Mom was working almost 40 hours a week, this left my brothers Jaye, Scott & Todd to watch over me. This was the recipe for my life's disasters.
Putting Jaye & Scott in charge to care for me and my older brother Todd was like trying to scramble hard boiled eggs with a pizza wheel before peeling off the shell. As a general rule, Saturday after breakfast was cleaning day. All the dishes, vacuuming, dusting, laundry and a thorough cleaning of the bathroom was our mission. Once the house was clean, our bedrooms had to be picked up, then if the grass needed cutting, that was to be done as well.
With me only being four years old, my job was to vacuum and bring the clean clothes out of the dryer into the living room so we all could fold them. These were jobs I could do and understand how to do them. Todd was about ten years old and his job was to get as many dishes cleaned as possible, then Scott or Jaye would wash any pots or pans which were difficult to clean. Jay usually followed around behind me as I vacuumed with a dust rag plus adding a load of dirty clothes into the washer and dryer. Scott was really fast and efficient with cleaning the bathroom. So our Saturday morning chores really didn't take very long - well all accept for the laundry. And as a general rule, we would get roughly four loads of laundry finished before noon.
For a while, Saturday's became routine. As we waited on laundry, Saturday morning cartoons played across the old black and white Zenith television screen.
One Saturday morning, things went haywire. Todd felt he was getting the short end of the stick as he traded chores with Scott. After an hour or so of scrubbing in the bathroom, he wasn't able to finish. While I was sitting with Jaye in the living room, Todd marched towards me, grabbing my arm and dragging me into the bathroom. "Here, you finish this! If you have time to sit and watch cartoons, you can do some work for once." Immediately Jaye came to my aide and informed Todd "Perry isn't going to do your chores for you." Todd then became very upset, with a hard push, Todd shoved me into the bathroom. I tripped and fell head first against the toilet.
With all the noise and excitement, Scott arrives to see what was going on. Jaye was about to slug Todd as Scott calls for Todd to follow him. Scott and Todd go off to Jaye & Scott's bedroom while Jaye examines my forehead as a welt started to grow. Jaye grabbed a bag of frozen peas, wrapping it in a dish towel and places it on my forehead. Needless to say I was hurt, scared and shaken up as tears flowed like a waterfall. While Jaye calmed me, I could hear Scott and Todd in the bedroom. I don't know what they were doing, but I knew I didn't want to be any where near Todd. Jaye and I went back into the living room to watch cartoons. A little while later, Todd ran out of the bedroom, naked carrying his clothes into the bedroom which Todd and I shared. He slammed the door shut and didn't come out until Dad came home from work.
Jaye and Scott explained to our father what had occurred. The look in his eyes said so much as he shook his head and sat down in his favorite chair. He looked over at me, with a finger hooking in motion to come to him. I rose up from the floor and stood before him holding the frozen bag of peas to my head. Slowly he took the peas from my hand to see the damages. I watch Dad's eyes closely as his facial expressions gave me some feeling of encouraging conclusion. "You'll be fine, it's just a bump. It will go away in a few days - now go outside and play."
I went out the back door to ride my bike. Jaye followed behind me. As I was about to sit on my bike, Jaye wanted me to follow him with a friendly forward motion wave. I followed him to the otherside of the garage, just out of hearing distance from the kitchen window. He knelt in front of me. Grabbing me by my collar with his index finger in my face, he leaned in with stern soft voice and said "You don't say a fucking word about what goes on in this house to anyone. Do you understand me?" I shake my head in agreement. "If you ever say anthing to anyone about this, I will kill you. Do you understand?" I nodded my head again.
I went upon my way of doing what I usually did with riding my bike, playing in the dirty, ramming trucks together and crying about a skinned knee. Then going back and doing it all again. Throughout that summer I recall seeing many more parades, found myself in places I've never seen and people whom I just met. It was time for me to start venturing out. I began to become more social. I liked meeting my neighbors and I liked meeting their friends. Before you know it, I'm missing.
Yup, no one can find me. Everyone is who lived in our house was looking for me. Each one in a different direction, calling out my name like a search party going in four different diretions. My Father and brothers were usually the search party. After a block or two, I was usually found in one direction or another out playing with some new kid I found within the distance.
It wasn't too long after this, things changed in my life. As brothers, they teach each other many aspects of life. I can't tell you it was out of trust, the willingness to learn or if it was natural within my personal being. I learned a lot about boys and I know what I liked about boys. I learned how to be quiet after all the lights were off in the house. I learned about sleeping naked. And I learned how to stop sucking my thumb. Every night there was something new until our parents bought us a set of bunk beds. Once Todd was up in his bunk, he very seldom came down. With every movement, the joints from the bed creeked.
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